NYC and LA Are Teaming Up to Fight for EVs

Key points

• New York City is not a car town.
• But pay attention as you walk, bike, or, sure, drive around the country’s most populous city, and you might notice a car trend: an increasing number of its vehicles are electric.
• The city government operates some 5,800 EVs, plus 4,700 hybrid vehicles—Parks Department pickups, Police Department crossover SUVs, school buses, paramedic response vehicles, even some hulking garbage trucks.
• A local law requires the city to transition its entire light- and medium-duty fleet to batteries by 2035 and its trucks by 2038. Los Angeles County, a car town, has its own EV goals: 100 percent fleet electrification by 2045, which would require replacing all 20,000 of the fleet’s vehicles.
• With just 600 electric vehicles and 350 plug-ins so far, officials have plenty of work to do.